Dell XPS 13 serious issue with all browsers and media players while using Android Studio!

I've got the new Dell XPS13 (in the non touch screen 1080p, 8gb ram, 256gb hard drive configuration by the way).
I wanted to use my fancy new laptop for some android app development recently and I've run into a really bizarre issue that I haven't been able to figure out via googling/stack overflowing.

When I run an application via the built in virtual machine and I then later choose to close the virtual machine I run into what I think is some sort of hardware acceleration issue. I can no longer view any videos on Youtube, or even access gmail in any browser without my browser crashing. It also affects regular media players like VLC and media player. Even if I reboot the machine the problem remains. I've had to uninstall tonnes of programmes to try and restore functionality and eventually ran dell's cpu and memory management assistant to try and diagnose/solve the problem, when it ran it restarted my computer and I regained all the normal functionality. But as it stands I cannot develop android applications on this laptop due to this set back!

I follow the completely standard procedure of setting up my laptop for android development, namely:

1: Install Java v7 JDK
2: Install android studio and sdk from the android development website.
3: Install additional sdk components (as explained in this link: http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/adding-packages.html)
4: Create a basic HelloWorld blank app just to get any sort of project up and running
5: Run the basic program ( this is the important part), this asks you to choose a virtual machine emulator to run the application, I just pick the default vm. Once it loads up I close down the VM and exit android studio.
6: Try view a youtube video (eventually get flashplayer crash), try view media file using vlc or windows media player, doesn't play.
7: Reboot laptop and the problem remains!

I've gone through the exact same process on an older dell xps 15z yesterday and had no issues with the vm and closing it down/ using browsers/viewing media. So i'm trying to find out if any other new dell xps13 user comes across the issue, to see if it's a specific issue with the new dell xps13, or just my own laptop. I've found zero information about this online thus far so it's been very hard to diagnose, I just wanted to get some other user opinions first before contacting Dell to further investigate the issue/possibly replace laptop.

Apologies for the massively long post, wasn't sure how to adequately get all the necessary details in fewer lines!

Many thanks in advance for anyone who tests this out for me or has any useful advice.

Ronan

 

Interesting to read this, I bought the XPS 13 as my current laptop, Samsung Series 9, isn't up to the job of android developing.
I hope this is an isolated incident and not common across all XPS 13.

 

Do you think you could try the above procedure and see if you can replicate or if it's just specific to my machine?, that's what i'd like to try and determine at the moment

 

It should arrive this week, I'll test it for you.

Have you found a way to get video working again?

 

Sorry about the delay there, The first time the issue happened I uninstalled Android Studio and Also Java, that seemed to fix the problem.

However the 2nd time I attempted this my problem didn't seem to go away just be uninstalling those two programs, so i had to have a look around dell's online diagnostic service after entering my computer service tag, and choose a service designed to check for "Slow system performance and Memory errors", this ran a 12 minute diagnostic tool for me. Once this tool ran and restarted my machine the problem disappeared, but at this point it's impossible for me to carry out android development on this laptop.

Eager to hear about your experience with the set up. I'd be very surprised if this was an issue that affected all dell xps 13s, because surely it would have popped up in more places online, but it's something i'd like to find out anyway. I'll have to get on to Dell regardless to see if they can offer up a solution to my particular problem

 

Sorry for the slow response, I haven't followed your exact steps, but I was using eclipse this evening on my new xps 13 and ran the android virtual device, after using this I can no longer watch video in chrome, but it would still run in project spartan.
I also found that cpu usage was huge, up to 97%, until I killed all chrome tasks. I will try the Dell diagnostic tool tomorrow to see if that fixes it.
I'll test android studio too.
I already have a replacement on the way because of a keyboard issue, so will try these things on my current one as that will be returned.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Interesting. I haven't tried using project spartan, just used Chrome, firefox and IE. When I ran and closed the virtual machine I found that I couldn't even play videos in VLC or media player which was bizarre. However I found that if I restart the machine then functionality returns to normal, however this isn't good enough of a solution obviously!
I contacted Dell and they advised me to upgrade to the latest BIOS, which I did, which didn't solve the issue either. They're currently investigating it. I'm curious if any other users have run into this issue, as this was the first time Dell had heard of the problem.

 

I followed the same steps like you did and encountered the exact problem. Couldn't play youtube videos and VLC/windows media player wasn't working. So this isn't a one-off problem that you are facing.
Any help to fix this would be really appreciated. Thanks.

 

This is both encouraging and saddening. Sorry it's happening to you but the fact that it's occurring on multiple devices might at least increase the chance of dell addressing the issue. I've been told that Dell's product development team are still looking into, they were looking into it all last week as well, so there's been no real developments there. I don't have a fix for you I'm afraid, I just haven't been able to continue any android development on my device, however on my machine if I choose to restart the laptop then functionality returns to normal, so hopefully this is the case for you as well.

I might get back onto Dell and mention that other users have encountered the same problem, at the time that I was in touch with their customer support desk they said they hadn't encountered this problem from any users before.

 

As a brief update, after a long time communicating back and forth with Dell they sent me a replacement laptop, the exact same model. So with this new laptop i first installed windows 10, then went through the same steps to set up android development, i.e install android studio and the sdk and the java jdk prerequisite. I also installed Intel HAXM which is just used required to create reasonably speedy emulators for development. I ran a basic hello world app in the emulator. Closed down the emulator, and I encountered all the original problems i had faced. Youtube videos not playing, gmail eventually crashing etc.

The only remedy was to restart the computer and just stop trying to use android emulators.

Very disappointing result. Particularly as Dell claimed to be unable to replicate the problem whereas I instantly encountered the issue again on a brand new laptop. I wonder did anyone else fix their issues...